Battletech rule variant: HAND HELD WEAPONS.
During the Star League period battlemechs were much more sophisticated, but the Succession Wars has seen a collapse of industry and technology. This is a given, of course, and can be seen in many areas of daily life as well as on the battlefield. One specific instance in the devolution of weapons technology is in the field of hand-held weapons. In the early years of mech design, one of the key features leading to the adoption and acceptance of the battlemech as a weapons platform was it's adaptability, and weapons were no exception. Early mech weapons were styled after the infantry fire arms of the period, being self contained, but with power and data couples built into the handles, individual weapons were easily used by a variety of mechs, and an individual mech could easily tailor itself to mission needs simply by picking out the appropriate laser, autocannon, or missile launcher exactly as it's infantryman counterpart did.
The Periphery wars however, showed up two key deficiencies of the concept, though they were little regarded at the time. The first was mechanical, hand held weapons were hardened with armor and built of durable materials, but final piece weight limited the amount of protective measures that could be packed into them leading to easy damage or jamming in true combat field conditions. Not critical during Star League days as repair and replacement was cheap and easy, in the centuries since the widespread destruction of production facilities and critical component manufactures has made “throw away” weapons impractically expensive. (Missile technology and munitions quality in the intervening centuries reflects this trend also...guidance that once made missile attacks deadly has been lost, and “missiles” today are more accurately compared to primitive ordnance rockets. This led manufacturers to “build in” weapons onto the frame of the 'mech itself where greater use could be made of armor and redundancy measures making for tougher, more durable battle weapons at the cost of flexibility.
This ties in with the second drawback of hand held weapons, what was once practical; the ability to let go of a mech's primary fighting guns. Even light damage or physical attacks on the arm or hand of a 'mech could lead to accidentally ejecting (dropping) the heavy hand carried weapon, making it available to be turned on it's owner just by picking it up. Dropping also became the cause of many weapon failures (jams). Worse still, Mechwarriors in a tight spot might choose to loose the weapon intentionally to increase speed, especially true when forces were experiencing reverses and 'Mech Units chose to flee the field. By the Second Succession War the great house militaries had passed orders requiring 'mechs to fix their weapons permanently, and the surviving manufacturers refitted and retooled production mechs to eliminate or permanently fasten hand held weaponry. Hand held weapons do still exist however, in limited numbers. Many come from ancient Star League caches, and a tiny number of copies come from minor factories throughout the inner sphere.
Rules;
The table below lists weapons that are available in Hand-Carried Format, as well as their important statistics.
To carry and use a hand-held weapon a mech must have a hand and all hand and arm actuators present. Damage to actuators heavily impacts weapon use; hand actuator damage give a -4 to hit and taking a hit on one requires a piloting skill roll at -2 to maintain hold of the weapon. Arm actuator damage gives a -3 to hit and taking a arm actuator hit requires a pilot skill roll at -1 to maintain hold of the weapon. Shoulder actuator damage adds a -2 to hit, and taking Shoulder Actuator damage requires a pilot skill roll to maintain hold of the weapon.
All penalties for actuator damage are cumulative, so a mech whose hand and upper arm actuator are hit would have a -7 to hit, making most shots impossible.
Carrying a hand held weapon penalizes running speed and jumping by one.
Jumping while carrying a hand held weapon requires a pilot skill roll to avoid dropping it on landing. Failure means the weapon is dropped in the landing hex.
Hand Held weapons have a reliability rating. When a hand-held is dropped this number or lower must be rolled for the weapon to remain functional. Failure means the weapon was damaged/jammed and is subject to the same repair rules as normal weapons of it's type.
Most Hand held weapons have a limited number of shots, the table shows how many shots are carried in the weapons magazine. When these are exhausted the magazine must be replaced before the weapon can be fired again. Magazines (also called “clips”) can be loaded by techs in the same way as they reload normal Battletech weaponry. Clips can be carried externally on a battlemech hanging from exterior hard points. Clips may be changed by a mech only if it has two fully functioning hands.
The location of a clip must be noted, and a clip is potentially hit when that location takes a hit. When a clip location is hit roll a pilot skill roll, failure indicates the clip has exploded and the clip's worth of damage is applied to the location in question. Energy weapons do not have magazines and rely on power feeds built into the 'mechs hand, these feeds fail if the weapon fails it's saving throw, and the weapon can only be repaired as per a weapon critical hit, further having an energy weapon knocked out of the hand will lead to a “blowback”, automatically giving one critical hit to that arm and doing 2 points of internal structure damage.
* Treat as a bi-pod weapon, Mech must be prone to fire.
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